


Judgement

by Hokuto



Category: Lost
Genre: Comment Fic, Crossover, Dark, Gen, Minor Character Death, One Shot, Season/Series 05
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-15
Updated: 2009-11-15
Packaged: 2017-10-02 21:48:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hokuto/pseuds/Hokuto
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ben goes to see the smoke monster and finds a stand-in.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Judgement

**Author's Note:**

> Written as a commentfic for a friend on Halloween who asked for horror/Lost stuff. The OC in question is one that the friend is familiar with; visual reference at the following link - [link to DeviantArt image](http://hokuto.deviantart.com/art/Strangers-To-Kindness-67589918) \- and a story reference at this link - [link to a writing piece marked mature on DeviantArt](http://hokuto.deviantart.com/art/Below-the-Wall-20024465).

Ben stared for a while. He was good at staring; he had the eyes for it.

After a minute he said, "You're not the usual smoke monster."

"I am not a usual anything," said the man with the blue hair and fox's eyes. "I was asked to - fill in, for a short time."

"Do you have much experience in this?" Ben demanded. "Who asked you to fill in? The monster?" Terrible thoughts occurred to him a moment too late to take the question back.

"Silence, Benjamin Linus," the man snapped. "I was asked; that is all you need know. And that I am very skilled at judging."

And before Ben could say that that wasn't what he was worried about, the man changed, his form dissolving into black smoke that flowed around Ben, its edges fluttering like a swallow's wings. The memories rose in Ben's mind: swings and rabbits and smoking jets splitting apart in the sky, blood and bruises, the ways Juliet didn't look at him, Alex's face at five, as a baby, screaming at him, dead in the grass.

The smoke pulled back, re-forming into the bone-skinned man, and Ben took a step back of his own and nearly fell. Oh God why Alex, why that one, why all of those - but at least he knew what came next...

"Leave here, Linus."

Ben did fall down, then, though only so far as his knees, which could take one more hit for the team. "You can't," he said, not knowing why. "You can't just - you can't let me go! You can't just let me live, after everything..."

"That is precisely what I am doing," the man said coldly. "Go forth. Live. You may live forever, for all that I care."

"Why would you do this to me?" Ben asked.

The man hesitated a moment, and then said, "Your child is lost; that is punishment enough."

_Not enough._ Benjamin pushed himself up and took an unsteady step towards the fox-eyed man. "You don't know - you didn't look hard enough, you overlooked something -"

Then the man was in his face, golden eyes glowing and grinning a terrible too-wide grin, and he said, "I have overlooked nothing, you wretched little human; I know every thing that you have done, every bold lie you have ever spoken, every being you have ever betrayed. I know that you betrayed your daughter, and I will let you live because you cared for her, but do not think that it means I have any care for you. Live on, live in pain, live as you wish; but once you have left I will leave, and return to my child who is not lost, and should you return the rightful monster of this place will be your judge, and it does not have such a sense of mercy as I."

"Mercy," said Ben. "If you had any mercy you would kill me now."

The man smiled yet more widely. "You will live, Linus."

And Benjamin left the temple, and lived.


End file.
